New York Times Editor’s Pick & Best True Crime of 2022

“Blood & Ink is among 2022’s best works of true crime.” —Washington Post

Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo investigates the notorious 1922 double murder of a high-society minister and his secret mistress, a Jazz Age mega-crime that propelled tabloid news in the 20th century.

In September 1922, two artfully posed corpses were found on a lovers’ lane in central New Jersey. The murder of Reverend Edward Hall, married to an illustrious heiress, would’ve made headlines on its own. But after authorities identified the body of Eleanor Mills, a choir singer from Hall’s church, a scandal-hungry nation devoured copious newspaper coverage of this scandalous murder mystery full of eccentric characters: a feisty flapper, a slippery private eye, a pipe-smoking oddball, and a theatrical female pig farmer who came forward with an alleged eyewitness account of the murders.

Three warring New York tabloids were bent on cracking the case, and when the tabloid editor Phil Payne embarked on a crusade to solve the mystery, his antics brought the Halls-Mill saga to its dramatic climax showcasing the birth of American tabloid culture.

A story of dark secrets and burning ambition, Blood & Ink freshly chronicles one of the most electrifying but forgotten homicides in U.S. history.